God bless the Damien Rice finishing school for gifted girls skilled in composing quirky chamber folk-pop symphonies. ‘Scuse our flippancy, but despite the always elegant arrangements, Ms Vyvienne is not without her own wrinkle-nosed sense of impishness. (This is, after all, a young woman who once covered NERD’s ‘She Wants To Move’, armed with a cello).
Long’s songs are charming and disarming. She apologises for her tardiness (‘Late Always’) and declares everlasting devotion with the guilelessness of a seven-year-old in the schoolyard (‘They’re Not Waving’), that elfin phrasing offset quite nicely by austere strings and piano.
This kind of thing has been done before, by everyone from Bjork to Joanna Newsome to Julie Feeney, but Ms Long is an expert at weaving neo-classical modernist-minimalist sounds with tactile words and melodies – a bit like matching fingerless hobo gloves with a ballgown. Listening to tunes like ‘Test of Endurance’ or ‘The End’ or the tightly wound ‘Bad Move’ is less like sitting through a recital than eavesdropping on journal entries made at the piano. Then she’ll throw you a curve like the near-Bacharachian pop of ‘Tactless Questions’, the minxy funk of ‘Freakscene’ or the gorgeous instrumental ‘Hideaway’.
Caterpillar Sarabande may be her debut, but Vyvienne Long is no ingenue.